


There Are Stars Here

by MadTeaParty



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angel Castiel, Angels, Author is obsessed with stars, Episode Tag: s04e01 Lazarurs Rising, Human Castiel, M/M, Season 10 - Freeform, Season 4 - Freeform, Season 8 - Freeform, Stars, a small step into AU when it comes to season 8, complete work, mentions of Mark Of Cain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:44:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadTeaParty/pseuds/MadTeaParty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even stars die. It's just that they live longer than humans.<br/>But Dean Winchester doesn't know that yet.</p><p>x</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Are Stars Here

**Author's Note:**

> I love stars and Castiel so I thought that's something I have in common with Dean Winchester and wrote this one-shot. Notice that a) I wrote this in about two hours, b) this isn't beta-read and c) english isn't my mother language so there might be some mistakes. Feel free to point them out!

Even stars die.  
It's just that they live longer than humans.

 

But Dean Winchester doesn't know that yet.

Now, he's only six years old, holding his baby brother in his arms, and staring up at the night sky.  
His dad isn't here (but Dean knows he'll come back eventually) and he also knows that he's supposed to stay inside.

But you can see the stars so much better when you're not staring through the dirty window of a motel room in a town you can't remember the name of.

And Dean wants to see the stars. He always did.

So he carefully lifted Sam into his arms, made sure he's warm enough (it's not cold but already dark and Dean is supposed to look after Sammy, right?) and slipped out of the room.

And here they are now.

He tried to explain some of the stars' names to Sam but he doesn't know enough about them so he stopped. He will, he decides secretly. He will find out about them.

He's only six. He knows mom is gone and that she won't come back. He knows that there are things out there, bad things. But dad isn't here, it's just him and Sammy (and the stars, so many stars) and he wants it to be that way, at least for a moment.

He knows Sam is watching them too. His eyes are fixed on the night sky and there's something in them that Dean can't exactly name but it makes him feel happy and proud. Maybe he wants to find out about the stars too when he's older. They'll do it together.  
Because they're all they have. Because mom is gone, dad too (for now) but the stars will always be there. They live forever, Dean thinks and it makes him a little jealous.

But there's something good about it too. They won't ever leave them alone. Even when they leave one nameless town to go to the next, there will be stars in the night sky.

“They'll wait for us”, Dean whispers to Sam, before he turns around and steps back into the motel room.

 

 

Sam reads a book, which is normal.

But Dean saw a picture when Sam flipped the page and now it won't go out of his mind. It looked like an explosion, but not the bad kind. Not one that's made of angry fire and brings death ( _Don't think about it, stop thinking about it_ ) but one full of colors.

It's bright, makes all the other stars around it look dim and to Dean, it looks happy. Maybe that's how stars are born.

“It's a Supernova”, Sam tells him because, of course, he saw Dean looking at the picture.

“It's how stars die”, his brother explains and Dean doesn't know what to say. Because that doesn't seem right. Stars are supposed to live forever, aren't they?

They're supposed to watch over humans and make them feel better when they're sad. They're supposed to wait for Sam until he's old enough (Dean isn't sure about himself anymore, not when Dad makes him go with him now). And now he learns that some of the stars he looked at as a kid might be already dead.

He feels betrayed.

John shouts at him later for not being concentrated when they're out and his dad shows him to shoot a target (it's a tree), while Sam is still in the motel room, reading about dying stars.

 

 

Dean stops thinking about stars that much.

Of course they're still there and he still sees them (they usually arrive late when they're stopping to spend the night at a motel and when Dean wakes Sam and then opens the Impala's trunk to carry some of the weapons inside, he can't help but notice the thousands of suns glowing above his tiny human head.)

But otherwise there isn't much to think about. Not about the stars. Because there are monsters down on earth (monsters the stars don't care about) and people to protect. -

He doesn't think stars care about people.

(They're just small unimportant human beings living too short for the stars to notice them.)

So why should he care about the stars?

(They're just small unimportant light points from down here, living too long to be worth thinking about.)

 

 

When Dean first meets a star, he doesn't know that.

Of course, the flying sparks around him might have been a clue but his heart hammers too fast in his chest to think about that.

The barn's door opens and a man enters and Dean doesn't know him so why does he feel this _I know you I know you I've always known you_ thing inside him?

He stabs him. Right in the chest.

Because this guy isn't normal, that's for sure, and “not normal” is bad, because it means “monster”.  
But the man – not a man, not a stranger – stares at him. He just fucking stares at him and _oh god_ , Dean is afraid.

And his eyes are blue. So, so blue.

They remind him of the sky (at day because otherwise they would be black) but he once saw a picture of a nebula in outerspace – a blue thing existing around the stars – and that's what comes to his mind.

And it's not the eyes. It's the man – not a man, not a man – himself.

A second later he takes the knife out of his chest, not hurt at all and Dean remembers that this is an enemy and he doesn't think he has ever met something as powerful as this thing.  
(Oh, he'll remember this thought later and wishes himself back to the good old times.)

 

 

He tells Dean that he's An Angel Of The Lord (capital letters and all). He tells him there is a god. He tells him there is a mission, a greater thing and Dean – he of all people – is part of it.

Dean hates the stars.

 

Even the stars die.  
It's just that they live longer than humans.

And when Dean sees an angel die for the first time, he's scared.

Because he remembers what happened when Anna got her grace back (but at the same time he doesn't because there was too much brightness for him to stand looking at) and he can't believe that something like that is possible.

They may look like humans (wear them as their skin) but – as easy it is to forget that – they aren't.  
In fact, they are light. (Stars.)

Dean Winchester knows that stars die and now he knows that angels – as great and powerful as they might seem - die too.

Can light – pure light – just stop existing?

(It's so much easier to think of them as people.)

 

Dean likes Cas. Sue him, he does.

But he still remembers him as the person that walked into that bar all this time ago, that pulled the knife out of his chest as if it was nothing and knocked Bobby out with the simple touch of his hand.

But there are more – new – things. There's Cas tilting his head when he doesn't understand something.  
And there's Cas – Castiel – smiting creatures and angels like the powerful thing he is.

He'll never understand Cas' existence, he thinks. (How could he?)

But he likes him.

(He's not sure what to think of the stars.)

 

 

Cas leaves. (To go back to heaven. To the stars?)

Cas comes back.

And Dean is relieved. Because he and Sam need him down here. Because he likes it when he's around (most of the time at least).

Because Cas has no idea about personal space but he knows about the Greek, has seen the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, the struggles of the french revolution and he probably knows what happened on each day since the begging of the earth.

But here he is, feeling just as lost and confused as Sam and Dean (maybe even more), not knowing where god is, only that he doesn't care.

Cas leaves.

Cas dies.

(And Deans scared, because he can't leave him alone, he can't do that. He's angry because that son of a bitch took off again.)

Cas betrays them.

Cas hurts them. (Him.)

But until now, Cas always came back.

Dean is glad.

 

 

Purgatory is a blur, each day melts into the next one, there's no sense of time, only blood and the same gray mass of trees, no matter in which direction he goes.

There are no stars here.

(Then he finds Cas.)

 

 

There are shooting stars.

They're falling out of the sky to land on a planet they've only seen from above before.

 

 

 

Cas is human.

And for Dean, that's not how it's supposed to be. Cas is light, Cas is a star (there, he said it, he finally did). He's not supposed to be something as small and fragile as a human.

Cas eats and drinks, he sleeps long and when he finally stumbles into the bunker's kitchen, his hair a mess (Dean secretly likes it that way), Dean already has a cup of coffee ready for him and Cas will mumble something before he drinks the black water (no sugar, no milk) and takes a second cup.

Of course it wasn't that easy from the beginning. Cas would stay in his room for two weeks, Sam in front of the computer, looking for a solution and encouraging Dean to talk to their friend.

And it's still not easy. They will be on a hunt or Cas will just stare at the sky (maybe he saw a bird) and Dean is reminded that, yes, Cas looks the same but there's a huge part of him that's not there anymore.

But the three of them (always just the three of them) are alive and that has to be enough.

 

 

Cas gets his grace back.

Dean becomes a demon.

And there are no stars, just darkness, and the urge to _kill, kill, kill._

He does. Oh, he does, he kills people simply because he enjoys it.

(And wasn't he once just a boy, his baby brother in his arms, staring up at the night sky, wanting to know about the stars?)

(What happened? Is it even possible to say there was something – a single situation, one wrong desicion – that let all of this happen?)

There are no stars here. There is no god, no hope.

(He nearly kills Cas.)

 

 

The mark is gone.  
He doesn't feel better.

He feels worse, actually.

Because he remembers all of it, how it felt to kill all those people. (How it felt to nearly kill Cas.)  
But Cas is still here.

He's right next to Dean as they lean against the Impala and look up at the stars.

It's been so long, Dean thinks. He doesn't deserve it, none of it.  
Cas doesn't think so. He takes Dean's hand in his and it's warm and soft around his own.

Dean is human. So is Cas.  
But at least they're not alone.

And Cas looks up at the sky and then he's talking to Dean, tells him about the stars and Dean remembers that he wanted to know about them when he was a child.  
With Cas right next to him and the cool breeze of the night around them, Dean decides he still wants to. After everything, he wants again.

He doesn't know how long they stand there, but Cas keeps talking, his voice keeps filling the air and after some time Dean will find himself not looking at the stars, but at Castiel.

Because there are so many stars up there, but there's also one right next to him.

And it's Dean's favorite.

 

 

He wants to kiss Cas, Dean thinks and he's not shocked about it.  
Because actually, he has wanted that for a long time.

(And again, he can't think of one special moment when he fell in love with him. He just is.)

And he does. He kisses Cas, when he's finally stopped talking and looked at Dean.

His lips are soft and perfect against his own, and Dean still thinks he doesn't deserve all of this, but he knows that Cas thinks the same about himself, so maybe that's why they haven't done this until now.

One kiss turns into the next and Cas has him pressed against the Impala and Dean wouldn't have wanted it any other way than it turned out to be.

“You're a star, Dean Winchester”, breathes Cas while he kisses Dean's cheek, his jaw, his neck.  
“You're a star”, he says as he returns to kiss his mouth and Dean can't breath, because that's not right.

Cas, Cas is the star, the good, the pure. Not him.

“We're both stars. We're all stars but you, you're the only one that matters to me.”

He has to say something. He-

Dean breathes Cas' name.

And Cas will explain it to Dean before he'll go back to kissing him and there won't be anything left to say because _it is right._

 

 

Even stars die.

But they never really die. (Because there's never really an end.)

Stars live and live (and live some more). They witness the birth and death of planets, maybe (if they are interested to look) they see the rise and fall of human empires. Many of them will see the end of humanity. (While humanity is able to see some of their ends.)

But actually it's more a transformation than a death.

Everything the star was made of, everything he burnt for, will explode in a wave of colors and happiness and it will float around until there will be new stars, new planets, _new life_ made out of it's remains.

(It'll be recycled, you could say.)

 

And that's why a man down on earth – just _one_ in millions of humans – is as much of a star as the angel he loves.


End file.
